The Chief Minister's Doomed White Moonlight

By a twist of fate, Tang Li saves a man who is aloof and peerlessly elegant, with the looks of an immortal banished from heaven.

After recovering from his injuries, he invites Tang Li to leave with him and promises her a bright future.

Tang Li shakes her head and politely declines. "No, thank you. I'll wait for Brother Lu to marry me and take me back to the capital."

When Tang Li sees him again, she is resplendent in red, standing alongside her husband, Lu Chenyuan, the newly titled third-ranked graduate of the palace examination.

The man is surrounded by a crowd. Dressed in white, his expression cool, he raises his cup from afar. "May the newly titled scholar and his wife enjoy a lifetime of harmony."

Only then does Tang Li learn that he is Pei Shiqing, Grand Tutor to the Crown Prince.

But before the wedding wine is even finished, the newly titled scholar's residence is suddenly surrounded by heavily armed soldiers.

The Lu family is framed and exiled as a clan. The Tang family tries to help them and is implicated in the case.

When Pei Shiqing comes to see her, Tang Li is still wearing her wedding dress.

The young man's fingers are as smooth as jade as he straightens her wedding cape. "Take a new identity and stay here."

Tang Li refuses to live on alone and avoids his hand. "Thank you for your kindness, my lord."

Later, her family suffers terrible hardships and dies on the road to exile. She and Lu Chenyuan also perish beneath a rain of arrows.

Only then does she wonder: What if she had accepted his offer?

So, given another life, she softly agrees. "I will go to the capital with you, sir."

She will go to the capital, save the Lu family, and change everyone's fate.

She still thinks of him as the same Pei, lofty and noble, as he was in her previous life.

She does not know that, step by step, she is delivering herself into the hands of a demon.

Throughout his life, Pei Shiqing has plotted and schemed with everything under control. There is only one person he has never dared to draw close to.

It would be enough to watch from afar as she builds a peaceful life with the man she loves and raises a family.

Until the day he sees her turn down that man's betrothal letter with his own eyes, in the pouring rain, beneath a covered walkway.

From that moment on, obsession takes root.

*

Blood stains the long street. Tang Li lowers her head beside him. "Please, sir... save Brother Lu one more time."

His hand gently closes around her slender neck. In his pitch-black eyes, the rain falls like splashed ink. "Tang'er, he is no longer your betrothed."

"Saving a stranger always comes at a price."

The beauty tilts her head, testing the waters, and slowly kisses his bloodstained palm.

A cold, unhinged power-holder x a scheming beauty

1. The cold, unhinged power-holder and the handsome new scholar compete for the heroine's affection.

2. The heroine has only ever truly loved the male lead.

Upcoming story: Entangled Branches. Please add it to your reading list!

Xiao Yiwei, the eldest son of the Duke of Ying's household, is skilled at riding and archery, well-read in poetry and books, and blessed with a face as exquisite as snow-carved jade. He is the dream man of countless women in Huaijing.

Unfortunately, at fifteen, Xiao Yiwei fell out with his family for reasons unknown and rode alone to the Northwest. He was gone for eight years.

Since then, the world has known only the second young master Xiao, a man of refined talent and virtue, and few dare speak of the fearsome General Dingbei.

The General Dingbei is solitary and proud. Even the neighboring country's young princess pursued him for years without earning so much as a glance.

Yet someone discovers that the general keeps a woman's jade pendant, often turning it over in his hands.

It was given to him by the woman who rescued him four years ago, after he was gravely wounded and fell from a cliff.

She carried him through a night of heavy snow, leaving her legs permanently sensitive to the cold.

And, after an accident, she spent one night with him, becoming intimate with him.

The borderlands are bitterly cold, and he has never cared much for women. He planned to return to the Northwest, put everything in order, then come back with a grand wedding procession to marry her and ensure she would never suffer again.

But when he returned to the place where they had met, all he found was news of her death.

Xiao Yiwei never expected to see her again at the Duke's residence.

Gu Zhixi has her hair pinned up in an elegant bun, looking every bit a noble young lady. She follows the second young master, Xiao Che, with a tender smile. "Brother Huaiyuan, how does this soup I made taste?"

Only then does Xiao Yiwei learn that her name was false, her identity was false, and even her supposed accidental death was a lie.

She saved him only because he looked a little like Xiao Che.

Gu Zhixi comes from humble beginnings, born to a maid and sent away to the countryside as a child, where no one cared about her.

She knows she is uneducated and uncouth. If her elder sister hadn't entered the palace and become a consort, and if her father hadn't wanted to preserve the marriage alliance with the Duke of Ying's household, why would he have brought her back and carefully educated her?

Xiao Che is refined and outstanding, and admirers flock to him like fish swimming upstream.

Gu Zhixi has to work very hard not to annoy him.

On the day Gu Zhixi gets her wish and becomes engaged, Xiao Che accidentally catches sight of something:

In the dimly lit side room, his elder brother, who has just returned to the residence and caused a scene, is holding his fiancée on his lap.

Behind the soft red curtains, her clothes are half undone. Xiao Yiwei strokes her rouged lips with his fingertips, grinning like a demon.

"There are two young masters in the Duke's household, Xixi. Which one are you going to marry?"

The young heir takes half a step back and knocks over the candle stand.

A sweet-talking little liar x a lonely, broken, mad-dog general

Theme: True love lasts forever